United States–Five financiers of the Islamic State group have been targeted by United States’ Biden administration. Members of the financing network in Turkey, Syria and Indonesia aided the IS group in multiple ways, thus triggering economic sanctions on Monday night.
“Members of the network played key roles in helping IS recruits join the group, and moved funds to help IS fighters obtain weapons and for children to be smuggled out of IS detention camps in Syria,” the US Treasury Department said in a statement.
Dwi Dahlia Sustani, one of the network’s member has been accused of assisting the IS members with money transfers from all the three said countries. Sustani has helped her husband deliver approximately $4000 dollars along with weapons to an IS leader. The department further added that about $500 from this was distributed to fellow IS supporters.
IS still has support among masses
Despite military defeat of IS in 2019, the group still has sympathisers and supporters across countries who are willing to lend any type of support to its leaders. “Supporters in more than 40 countries around the world have sent funds to IS detainees in northeast Syria,” the US Treasury Department said in its press release.
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US Treasury Department has further noted that at al-Hol detention camp in the northeast of Syria, affiliates of the IS group have received up to $20,000 per month through the local hawala currency transfer system.
IS continues to transfer children out of camps
The prison camps run by Kurdish led forces in northeast Syria are the originating point of smuggling of many IS affiliates out of camps to Idlib, Raqqa and Deri Ezzor provinces. “ISIS is particularly focused on smuggling children out of displaced persons camps for recruitment as fighters with much of the latest funding having been gathered in Turkey and Indonesia,” the Treasury said in statement on Monday.
The economic sanctions on IS financiers is a critical step to stem the aid flowing to IS fighters. With Washington holding its ground on Syrian policy, the humanitarian aid is said to flow in for Syria.
